Shaping the digital transformation

Nevertheless, it is indisputable that digitization and information management will permanently and fundamentally change our working world and our private lives. Digitization rarely stands alone. Developments are accompanied by smart technologies and services, by disruptive innovations, and also by changing values, to name just a few trends. Instagram, the free online service for sharing photos and videos that belongs to Facebook and was founded in 2010, played a role in the collapse of Kodak's business model, a company that had been established in the photo business for many years. Kodak had to file for bankruptcy. A similar fate befell Quelle, which already delivered department store catalogs to our grandparents' homes, and which was unable to defend itself against Amazon because it had slept through the trend toward digitization. Our smartphones cover everything we need in our daily lives, from spirit levels, alarm clocks, maps and encyclopedias to e-mail inboxes and access to the Internet. What's special about this development is that this time it's "from the bottom up." There is hardly anyone who is not active in a social network, who does not use their smartphone to call up services or get information. The drivers are therefore the high affinity of individuals to the intensive use of digital services and to smartphones, which have become indispensable.

​​​​​​​There is no doubt that digitization is changing our private lives and our working world.
The example of document management systems (DMS) clearly shows how this change is reflected in practice. At the very beginning, in the mid-eighties, the idea was that DMS could be used to store and archive documents in large quantities. The focus was clearly on management and auditability. It was about capacity and the reliability of long-term storage systems. Then it was discovered that internal processes could be well supported with DMS, once the documents were scanned. Electronic records" were born. Systems and solutions grew, functionalities were significantly expanded, approaches such as "DOMEA" were developed. Document management systems were thus for a long time important building blocks for effective and efficient handling of information and documents within organizations and in exchanges between companies. With information management and the digital transformation that has long since begun, the corresponding solutions are by no means old hat, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. Today, the boundaries for meaningful solutions simply have to be pushed much further.

Today, an electronic file must be able to do much more. It must support the entire lifecycle with services. These include multi-channel input (e-mail, paper, portal, fax, specialist procedures, social media), services during capture and processing (generation of signatures, uploading and downloading of documents, electronic briefcases, management of life cycles, mobile support), and predictive analytics to predict customer behavior and make specific offers. The electronic file has thus arrived at the "customer". And this is put in the foreground, no matter whether in an insurance company (the insured), in retail (the customers) or in public administration (the citizens). The eFiles have thus finally crossed the internal workflows and thus the boundaries of companies and organizations.

This offers great potential benefits. A missing proof, for example when concluding a purchase or leasing contract, no longer has to be laboriously requested by mail and then, when it arrives at the company, assigned to a process and a file. The customer can upload the required proof via their smartphone and a customer portal, the system checks the proof, and the process can be completed quickly and easily, with almost no user intervention. Of course, you have to pay attention to the legal requirements for such processes. And even today, not every document can simply be accepted as an image. But that, too, may yet change. This brief digression shows: Document management systems and electronic files are, as isolated solution fields "out", information management and digital transformation are "in".

​​​​​​​It will certainly be some time before solutions are available that are open enough to combine the advantages of different approaches. Until then, it is important to take into account the key trends in strategy and design when building and expanding solutions, and to gear solutions toward openness and flexibility.

Then, even today, solutions are possible to make information management an important success factor for companies and organizations through the efficient and effective use of information and knowledge derived from it.